Working the phones: control and resistance in call centres by Woodcock J, (ed.) (2017), London: Pluto Press. 200 pp. £17.99

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12122
• Date: 01 November 2018
• Published date: 01 November 2018
• Author: Eva Nechanska

New Technology, Work and Employment 33:3

ISSN 0268-1072

Book Review

Working the phones: control and resistance in call centres

Woodcock J, (ed.) (2017), London: Pluto Press. 200 pp. £17.99

This book aims to provide a critical account of the different ways employees of

call centres may resist persistent managerial controls. The ethnographical nature

of the monograph goes far beyond an analysis of control/ resistance and informal

social relations in the context of a single workplace. The book examines the

changing nature of call centre work in the wider capitalist context of a post-

industrial service economy. Such analysis helps understand how this context leads

to employees’ decision- making to resist individually and/or collectively in spite

of low wages, precarious employment, emotional labour and electronic

surveillance.

There are six chapters, and the introduction starts with the illustration of the

call centre workplace from the television series ‘The Call Centre’. It introduces

various elements of the work carried out by the employees, such as emotional

labour, that are dealt with in more detail later in the book. It also outlines the

opportunities for capital to set up call centres, together with the political and

economic factors of privatisation and intense competitive pressures. This provides

greater understanding of the wider implications of the nature of call centre work,

covering issues including flexibilisation, outsourcing and precarious employment.

The labour process lens informs the research and helps explain the wider external

context influencing the social dynamics of the workplace. Woodcock also examines

worker’s struggles and attempts for collective organisation derived from the ‘work-

erism’ in Italy that reflect worker’s experiences with intensifying supervision and

increased exploitation and controls, arguing that potential for resistance exists in

workplaces where ‘power is exercised’ (p. 33).

The following chapter illustrates the author’s experience of finding a job in a

call centre and the nature of work. The labour process is of particular interest,

detailing how workers try to close sales at any cost by following the script and

how the whole working experience is emotionally draining. The chapter describes

how workers attempt to alleviate boredom and try to limit their time on phones

by extending breaks or sabotaging the equipment. The section on computerised

Taylorism shows how intensive controls in the call centre impose constant pressure

on workers to close sales. However, this surveillance can be counterproductive

as employees lack motivation and become alienated. The classical Marxist literature

on alienation is utilised to explain the process of call centre workers’ alienation

and refusal to work, which has its roots in the repetitive, boring and intensive

nature of the job.

The third chapter of the book critically examines the role of management and

supervisors in the call centre. Here, workers subvert the supervisors’ attempts to

enhance their financial bonuses through misbehaviour. Such evidence is contra-

dictory to unitarist claims of ‘shared’ organisational goals. The most important

duty of the line managers, aside from call monitoring, is providing feedback on

employee performance. Such feedback is usually vague, generalised and does not

achieve the intended outcome: to improve employees’ performance. The chapter

also highlights how the combination of intense technical and direct controls of

ever- present line managers shifts the frontier of control towards management.

Given line managers lack the social skills to engage and motivate workers, their

Book review 273© 2018 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and

John Wiley & Sons Ltd.